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Topic: Lap Synth |
Paul Honeycutt
From:
Colorado, USA
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Posted 20 Aug 2005 7:37 pm |
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| Has anyone put a Roland guitar synth pickup on a lap steel? What was your experience? How was the tracking? |
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Keith Cordell
From:
San Diego
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Posted 21 Aug 2005 5:26 am
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| I have wondered about that myself. Seems like it would work, but no way to be sure except to try it. |
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Jay Fagerlie
From:
Lotus, California, USA
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Posted 21 Aug 2005 5:34 am
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I know Pete Grant has one on an old National...
Maybe he'll chime in and tell us all about it.
Jay |
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Gerald Ross
From:
Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
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Posted 21 Aug 2005 5:51 am
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I did a lot of MIDI music around 10 years ago on a dedicated MIDI guitar (check out my website for examples, URL - below).
At that time the MIDI converters still had a hard time keeping up with the signal sent from the guitar's hex pickups. There was always a bit of a lag from the time you picked the note until you actually heard it. And many of the notes played were misinterpretted by the converter (you pick a G and it sounds as a G# or even a B if the converter latched onto a stray harmonic).
From what I have heard the MIDI specification has not changed much since it was agreed upon in the 1980's. It still operates at a very slow rate eventhough CPU speeds have increased 10-maybe-20 fold. The slow speed is fine for keyboard players. Keyboard players rule the MIDI world. A note played on a keyboard does not to be converted from analog to digital as it does on a guitar, hence the reluctance to change from the the keyboard world.
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Gerald Ross
'Northwest Ann Arbor, Michigan's King Of The Hawaiian Steel Guitar'
CEO, CIO, CFO - UkeTone Records
Gerald's Fingerstyle Guitar Website
Board of Directors Hawaiian Steel Guitar Association
[This message was edited by Gerald Ross on 21 August 2005 at 06:54 AM.] |
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Pete Grant
From:
Auburn, CA, USA
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Posted 21 Aug 2005 8:01 am
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I had one on an old Oahu. Although it was an interesting experiment, the one time I took it to a gig, I realized that I could sound just like...
...a keyboard. |
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Denny Turner
From:
Oahu, Hawaii USA
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Posted 22 Aug 2005 2:08 am
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I played midi electric spanish guitar for a couple of years about 6-8 years ago. I found it quite enjoyable to have convincing voices of other instruments. The key to making it sound believable was to study how those other instruments voiced notes in their format & mechanical limitations. I think that fretting the guitar afforded a convincing note format that would take quite a bit of work to imulate on Steel with it's fluid moving tone bar, ..."requiring" quite a bit of work on dead-still bar placement, good stacato fingering and good hand & finger blocking to imulate formats that have dead-on set notes. And I also found that you really need to be convincing in emulating the sound characters and voicings of the other instruments you are going to emulate ...otherwise it sounds quite phony / fake.
I particularly liked and enjoyed playing orchestral strings via slide on the midi guitar ...and think that a Steel would be quite well suited for that, ...although too many notes with strong signal (like the broad octave and timbre spans of Orchestral strings ...especially on the baritone and bass end, ...and some of those patches / "tone banks" have other orchestral instruments in there with the strings) can overload an inadequate amp rather quickly at the amp gains necessary for good tone separation; So a real good amp with allot of headroom and good honest speakerS is "neccessary".
Fine tuning the midi pickup's sensitivity is also critical, ...for the best tracking and yet not so sensitive that the midi brain thinks overtones, finger-farts and nose-picking are notes.
Playing midi guitar will darn sure teach you real quick just how sloppy most pickers play guitar! Slurs, note-correcting tricks and a number of other guitar techniques stand out like a sore thumb in midi; You can imagine what a piano sounds like bending and shaking notes; Although a number of techniques inherent in each type of horn is fun and rewarding to emulate well ...like reed-bite, note bending and sqwauking on a Sax.
My ears / brain / fingers seemed to adjust to the time lag quite well ...catching up in a rather short time to having to play a few miliseconds ahead of real-time; Although it took a bit too much concentration / distraction until the ear / brain / hands caught up with and got comfortable and more seamless with the techniques. It DOES take allot of woodshedding. As a matter of fact, it was the distraction of the technology that made me give it up; It just got too much in the way of freer expression the guitar is so well suited for. Now if I had a roadie/tech to do all the programming, set-ups, button pushing and tweaking etc, I might give it a second thought for a few tunes now and then.
Playing the big Hammond sounds on Green Onions and Blues songs was quite enjoyable too! BIG sound.
Aloha,
DT~
[This message was edited by Denny Turner on 22 August 2005 at 03:15 AM.] |
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Paul Honeycutt
From:
Colorado, USA
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Posted 22 Aug 2005 12:49 pm
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Thanks for the feedback. I might have a gig playing in a trance/chant band and there's already a lead guitarist, so I thought it might be a good way to go for drones and other voices to give some contrast to the other instruments. It's not a situation where I'd have to immitate other instruments as much as create interesting sonic textures.
Those of you with experience, what kind of pickup were you using and what kind of synths or moduals were you using? Are there better pickups then the Roland? |
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Kevin Ruddell
From:
Toledo Ohio USA
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Posted 22 Aug 2005 2:01 pm
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| The great bass player Dave Bronze mentioned in an interview that he was hired to play synth bass for an 8 week tour with the band Art Of Noise after they had a radio hit with Duane Eddy in the mid eighties. He said his timing was messed up for a while afterwards and he had to play regular Fender bass for some time to get right again |
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Stephan Miller
From:
Silver Spring, Maryland, USA
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Craig Stenseth
From:
Naperville, Illinois, USA
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Posted 26 Aug 2005 4:53 pm
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I think it would work out best with each string of the steel being assigned to its own Midi channel, and the 'pitch bend' parameter of the synth set to the max (usually an octave).
That way, the slides will translate to midi 'pitch bend' events, but each string will be 'bent' by the right amount, rather than the same amount being applied to all strings.
(I have a Casio Strat-style midi guitar, it seems like the same sort of tricks would work on a lap steel). |
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Michael Brewer
From:
Carrollton, Texas
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Posted 26 Aug 2005 4:59 pm
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I have been playing midi steel for 20 years using an IVL Steel Rider. This is a unit that was far ahead of its time. It has a few limitations. I disable the pitch bending function. It does not return to pitch well. Otherwise this unit is a fabulous piece of equipment. The tracking is better than Roland (even on the low strings)and I have never had a problem adapting to the slight delay down on the low strings. Anyone who is fortunate enough to own one of these will tell you that. I play like it isn't there.
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Mike Brewer
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Dan Tyack
From:
Olympia, WA USA
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Posted 26 Aug 2005 9:35 pm
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| Paul, if you are playing in a trance band, go get yourself an Adrenalinn pedal. Trust me on this. Or don't trust me, try it out first, but it's the route to trance/electronica heaven. The key is to turn off the amp models. |
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